Catherine Vallorani

ENC 1101
Professor Wolcott
November 13, 2014
Writing About Writing
Writing About Writing was written by two
prestigious authors and teachers, Elizabeth Wardle and Douglas
Downs. Elizabeth Wardle is the Chair of the Department of
Writing and Rhetoric at University of Central Florida, has a
Ph.D. in Rhetoric and Professional communication from Iowa State
University, and is conducting a longitudinal study of writingrelated knowledge transfer. Doug Downs is the Director of
Composition at Michigan State University, earned a Ph.D. in
Rhetoric and Composition, and is currently studying problems if
researcher authority in undergraduate research in humanities.
Wardle and Downs composed Writing About Writing not only to
teach students about writing but also to introduce us to the
discourse community of writing. A discourse community is a group
of people who share a set of ideas, common public goals,
assumptions, and a common way of communicating. This book
attemptattempts to prove that people who study writing make up a
discourse community. John Swales, a professor of Lingistics at

the University of Michigan, discusses concepts that teach us

about our literacy. The article titled The Concept of Discourse
Community, acts as a guide to teach us about discourse
communities, speech communities, genres, and lexis. All these
concepts revolve around the central conceptmain idea of
discourse communities. Swales provides six points that help to
recognize a discourse community, and Writing About Writing shows
that people who study writing fall under these six points and
more. Writing About Writing has a goal, which is to improve our
writing skills. Skilled writers have their own lexis, Wardle and
Downs do a good job introducing and explaining their lexis to
students, by introducing us to John Swales and many more authors
who go into further detail. A discourse community can build
credibility many different ways, Writing About Writing built its
credibility though all of the authors, teachers, and doctors who
are cited in this book. AfterSwales says that discourse
communities recruit its members by persuasion, training or
relevant qualification (Swales 220) and after reading many
articles from this book it is clear to me that writersthe
authors have the qualifications and do have their own discourse
community.
Learning and understanding about discourse
communities and Discourse communities is not only useful to pass
this class but it is information that I will take beyond the

classroom and will apply it to my career. I plan to go into

medical school and become a doctorradiologist. The medical felid
meets all of Swales six points to be considered a discourse
community. They have a public common goal; to cure people of
sickness. Unlike authors, doctors build their credibility a
couple of ways; through their clientele, the connections made
with other doctors, and by the studies and research they are a
part of. Another major part of being considered a discourse
community is to have a specific lexis, which the medical
community definitely has. Paul Gee, Mary Lou Fulton Presidential
Professor at Arizona State University, wrote Literacy,
Discourse, and Linguistics, in this article he says the focus
of literacy studies or applied linguistics should not be
language, or literacy, but social practices. (Gee, 484) Each
discourse community havehas their own social practices, which
cannot be faked. There is no in between, either you know how a
discourse community behaves or you will be labeled a pretender.
Gee states that you cannot teach doing-being-valuing-believingcombinations that linguist have, and that is not only true for
linguist but for all discourse communities.

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Citations
Swales, John. "The Concept of Discourse Community." Writing
About Writing: A College Reader. Eds. Wardle and Downs. 2nd ed.
Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2011. 215-229. Print.
Gee, James P. Literacy, Discourse, and Linguistics:
Introduction. Journal of Education 171.1 (1989): 5-17. Print.

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